Police in Thailand have captured the last Canadian fugitive in what U.S. authorities describe as one of the biggest penny stock frauds in history.

The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday that Thai police arrested Greg Curry, who once lived in the Toronto area, about 200 kilometres from Bangkok without incident.

The department had few other details on the circumstances surrounding the location of Curry’s arrest. He awaits extradition proceedings to the U.S.

Curry, 63, faces 12 charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and impersonating an employee of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

Police had suspected that Curry was living in or near Bangkok, but reports suggested he had fled the country when the U.S. laid criminal charges last week.

He joins eight other defendants behind bars whom police arrested in connection with massive penny stock and advance fee schemes. Three other defendants are Canadians, including his son Kolt, a former Aurora resident, and Sandy Winick, the alleged mastermind behind the fraud who lived in Toronto and Stoney Creek at one time.

The other defendants were arrested in Canada and the U.S., with the exception of Winick, 55. Police nabbed him in a hotel in Bangkok over the weekend.

The alleged fraud resulted in $140 million (U.S.) in losses for hundreds of investors in 35 countries, between 2008 and 2013.

The schemes involved the sale and manipulation of billions of worthless shares of shell companies in classic “pump and dump” operations, where unsuspecting investors bought stock in shell companies without any assets, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The defendants allegedly promoted the companies’ securities through bogus news releases and hard sales pitches from “boiler rooms” that sparked price jumps before the stocks abruptly crashed and the perpetrators disappeared.

The U.S. Justice Department said Curry, the president of one phony company, played a key role in the alleged fraud by also assisting the operation of call centres that were the focus of advance fee schemes.

In those alleged rackets, the defendants induced investors, including many victims in the stock fraud, to pay upfront brokerage and legal fees to sell the shares and recoup their losses. But they received nothing, the department noted.

Winick, who faces 23 charges, and Curry could spend up to 20 years in U.S. prison on each count relating to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Police slapped Winick with two of those counts and Curry with another one.